


Positive Symptoms

by karuvapatta



Series: Disaster Family [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fire Nation Royal Family, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Canon, ignores the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 20:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14028003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karuvapatta/pseuds/karuvapatta
Summary: Azula makes a run for it and Ursa volounteers to track her down.





	Positive Symptoms

**Author's Note:**

> Technically speaking, this is a loose sequel to my other Avatar fic [Family Bending](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13587258/chapters/31187592), which focuses on the Fire Nation Royal Family. It's been pointed out to me that Ursa and Azula didn't get to interact much with one another, so I'm trying to work on that. You don't need to read it to know what's going on, however.
> 
> I'm still trying to figure out how to write Azula, so please let me know what you think!

The size of the fleet felt excessive. Ursa refrained from arguing, however, as the sleek coal-powered boats surrounded the tiny island. She stood on the main deck as they dropped the anchor into the shallow water, eyes trained on the empty beach.

“We are ready to go ashore, ma’am.”

“Thank you, captain,” Ursa said. “But I’ll go alone.”

Captain Lee regarded her for a long moment. “I wish to state my strong objections,” he said.

“Noted,” Ursa said calmly.

The soldier nodded and gave her a stiff salute.

“Very well, ma’am.”

They climbed onto a skiff and waited as the sailors lowered it onto the azure water. The landscape was idyllic, save for the boats spitting grey smoke into the blue sky: fine black sand on the beach, thick green foliage, shimmering waves, and the rocky outline of the long-dormant volcano.

Lee rowed them towards the shore. Once he took off his fearsome helmet, Ursa was struck by how _young_ he truly was. Admittedly, not many volunteers stepped up for this particular mission, but did the Fire Nation military consign every able-bodied adult into its rank, leaving only children to join Domestic Forces?

The skiff rocked gently on the waves, and then scratched the bottom of the sea as they reached the shallow waters. The waves crested and broke all around them.

Ursa took off her shoes and gathered up her outer robe, to the Captain’s astonishment. And – hilariously – the young man _blushed_.

“Thank you,” she said. “I can walk from here.”

“Lady Ursa—”

She climbed over the edge of the skiff and felt the cold water up to her calves, bare feet sinking an inch into the sand. She gathered her shoes and pack and bowed to the soldier.

“Come ashore if I’m not back by sunrise,” she said.

“Sunset,” Captain Lee said, a hard note in his voice.

Ursa sighed. “Very well. Sunset.”

She began to walk.

The ocean bed was sandy, dotted with the occasional shell or a curious fish. Ursa saw a patch of razor-sharp rocks and steered clear of them, conscious that she was perfectly visible for every soldier onboard. It would not do to fall flat on her face and soak her dress before all of them.

No footsteps were visible on the beach, either washed away or blown away by this point, but fresh scorch marks marked the trees, ash on the ground from where thick foliage had been burned to create a path. Ursa cleaned her damp feet from the fine black sand and put on her shoes.

It did not take long to find the shelter. The island was small and of no strategic importance, with only a small fishing village on the other side of it. And this shack – there was no better word for it – had been crudely put together to keep away the rain and the mosquitoes.

“Hello?” Ursa called, knocking on the doorframe. Without proper care, wood rotted away quickly in the humid climate; the frame nearly fell apart.

“You again?” a voice said. “What do you want?”

The tone was sullen, unpleasant, and thoroughly unwelcoming. But at the very least it wasn’t accompanied by a fire blast.

Once her eyes accustomed to the gloom inside, Ursa could see a figure kneeling ramrod straight on the other side of the small room. She wondered idly how long she had been there, waiting.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Ursa said.

A scoff. “Looking to arrest me.”

“No, that’s the job of the soldiers I left behind,” Ursa said. “Can I come in?”

“And if I say no, will you listen?”

Ursa sighed.

“Yes, of course. But please, Azula, let me in. The soldiers will be here at sunset and they will not bother to ask.”

“Their company would be more pleasant than yours,” Azula said.

The words were biting, but the tone wasn’t. In fact, everything about Azula was oddly subdued, as if her boundless energy had been finally spent. She was left here, sitting alone in the dark empty shack – a long, narrow fire pit had been laid neatly before her kneeling figure, reminiscent of the one in the throne room. But it, too, was dark and empty.

Fear gripped her, sudden and debilitating. She walked inside and lit up a flame in her own palm, casting its warm golden glow around the room.

Azula looked terrible. Her eyes were sunken in a thin face, hair cropped at uneven levels and hanging down, unwashed. She had dressed herself in a rag but sat proudly like a queen.

“Oh,” Ursa said. “Azula—”

“Shut up,” the girl said. “Don’t take that tone with me. And don’t you dare touch me,” she added, when Ursa reached towards her reflexively. “I’ll set you on fire if you come any closer.”

“I think you’d have done that already, if you could,” Ursa said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

Azula hadn’t moved an inch.

“How well you know me,” she said flatly.

Ursa kept walking. She laid down her pack and knelt opposite the girl, with slow and deliberate movements, as if she was approaching a nervous animal. When Azula kept to her unnatural stillness, Ursa reached out and, gently, took her hands into her own.

They were ice-cold, covered with minor abrasions, nails cut short and unpainted, broken in some places. She tried to breathe some warmth back into them.

“It happens when you overexert yourself,” she said. “I think you need rest, Azula.”

“I’m not tired,” Azula said. Confusion twisted her blank face; she looked down at her hands, then at Ursa. Then, firmly, she yanked them away and put them back in her lap.

“Did you burn down the village?” Ursa asked, quietly.

“Yes,” Azula said. The simple admission hurt more than sadistic glee she might have expressed otherwise; the idea that she did not care at all—“They sold me out. So I treated them like the lying, treacherous rats they are.”

“They are simple fishermen,” Ursa said. “Fire Nation citizens.”

“Let Zuko protect them, then,” Azula said. “Or is the usurper not up to the demands of the throne he stole?”

Agni, where could she even _begin_? Ursa tried to search the girl’s impassive face for the child she gave birth to and nursed – but even then she came up short. As a child, developing her own thoughts and reasoning and ambitions, Azula drifted further and further away from her. There was cruelty eating through her mind like a disease. Ursa had been unable to stop its progress then, how foolish was she to think there was something she could do now?

Foolish or not, she owed it to Azula to at least try.

“That sounds like your father,” Ursa said. “Did you speak to him?”

“Yes,” Azula said. “When I ran away from prison. I considered letting him out, too, but without his bending he is useless to me.”

“Ah,” Ursa nodded to herself. “And I assume you stopped on your way out to tell him that?”

“You should have seen his face,” Azula said with bitter, vindictive joy.

“I did,” Ursa said. “I spoke to him, too.”

“You visit him often, don’t you,” Azula said. “The guards told me so—” Ursa recalled the burn marks on the guards’ skin and shivered. “—which is funny, because you hardly ever visited me.”

“Whenever I did, you either told me to leave or acted like I wasn’t real,” Ursa said.

“And you left, every time,” Azula said. “Leaving is what you do best.”

“Tell me about these hallucinations,” Ursa said.

“I don’t want to talk about them.”

“Then tell me, why did you run away?”

“From prison? Take a guess.”

“Why come here, then?”

“None of your business.”

“Do you even know where you are?”

“Go away.”

“Where are you planning to go next?”

“Shut up.”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“ _Leave_.”

Azula sat back, eyes wide and breast heaving, as if she had just ran a mile. She buried her face in her hands, in a very Zuko-like gesture, and shivered.

When she raised her head and looked at Ursa, her eyes widened in terror.

“I’m not leaving,” Ursa said quietly. “And I’m not a hallucination.”

“You’re lying,” Azula said. “You always lie.”

“As do you,” Ursa said. “It’s what we do best, I’m afraid.”

She reached out to touch Azula’s feverish, sweat-covered forehead. Then she retrieved a water-skin from her pack and handed it over, but the girl would not take it.

“You need to drink,” Ursa said. “You’re dehydrated. I don’t think you’ve eaten since leaving prison, either. Azula, you’re going to die if you carry on like this.”

“I’m not drinking anything you give me,” Azula hissed. “You’ll poison me like you poisoned Grandfather.”

“Why would I do that?” Ursa asked gently.

There was no answer. Azula took the water-skin and held it tight, throat bobbing, her lips dry and parched. _Refuses to eat_ , read a frequent note by one of the healers. _Non-bizarre delusions, visual and auditory hallucinations, insomnia… recurrent psychotic episodes. Weight loss. Amenorrhea._

“Don’t you want to be rid of me?” Azula asked. “Or would you rather wait for Zuko to do it?”

“Are you trying to provoke him into violence?” Ursa asked. “What would that prove?”

“It’s a science project. I’m testing his commitment to his boyfriend’s philosophy,” Azula replied flatly.

“I don’t think Zuko and the Avatar have this sort of a relationship,” Ursa said.

“Oh, suddenly you are the expert on me and Zuko?”

Ursa sighed. She retrieved the water-skin from Azula’s weakened grip and tipped some of the liquid into her own mouth.

“See? I’m still alive,” she said.

“You could have taken an antidote beforehand.”

“These are never as effective as you might believe,” Ursa said. “Besides, there’s an entire fleet of Fire Nation soldiers waiting to apprehend you. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t bother coming here.”

This time, Azula took the water-skin. Once she started drinking her survival instincts took over and she downed the whole thing, water dribbling down her chin.

She tossed the skin aside and stood up, surprising Ursa. The show of strength was spoiled, however, by a spell of apparent dizziness; Azula swayed on her feet and leaned on the wall, eyes shut tight, while she regained her balance.

“When will they be here?” she asked coolly.

“Sunset.”

“I need to be presentable.”

“That’s to be expected,” Ursa said. “I brought your clothes.”

Azula cracked one vicious, golden eye open.

“So considerate,” she snarled. “Where was all that thoughtful parenting these past seven years?”

Ursa rose too, considerably steadier on her feet. There was a stream on the way here, and a shallow pool surrounded by rocks a little further uphill.

“We can talk about this when you are in better shape,” she said.

In the full brightness of sunlight, Azula looked even worse. Her skin was pale and the shadows under her eyes prominent. She shivered despite the warm temperature, wrapping the tattered robe tighter around her. But she walked, unassisted, towards the pool.

“Did you pack the entire spa?” she asked, eyebrows arched, when Ursa laid down her soaps and brushes on a flat rock.

“I decided to forgo the servants,” Ursa replied. “But I can wash your hair, if you’d like. And, well, even it out a little.”

Azula eyed Ursa’s own long black hair, pinned back in her favourite style. She had refused her former hairpiece – Ozai had kept it, the bastard; it was easier to hate him when one ignored the occasional display of sentimentality – but felt more like herself with it styled in this way.

“I want you to cut it,” Azula said.

Ursa paused.

“All right,” she said under Azula’s challenging gaze. “But I warn you, I’m not very good at this.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She was eyeing the scissors suspiciously while Azula washed and dressed herself in the undergarments Ursa had found in her chambers. It had been depressingly full of armour pieces and void of any casual outfits. Ursa herself hadn’t had access to Royal tailors and expensive fabrics when she was Azula’s age, but was still shallow enough to own a number of pretty dresses. But, she supposed, she hadn’t been forced into rigorous military training since early age.

“Well?” Azula asked.

“Sit back, please.”

The first part was easy. She gently massaged the soap into Azula’s scalp, while her uneven hair floated in the pool around her head. This was something she had done many times with young Zuko and Azula, cherishing the moment of domestic normalcy despite it being, technically speaking, beneath her station. But then she rinsed the soapy studs from Azula’s hair and was left with the scissors glinting mockingly at her.

“Are you sure about this?” Ursa asked, picking them up.

Azula opened her eyes and frowned.

“It’s just hair,” she said. “It grows back, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but it takes time,” Ursa said.

“Don’t worry if it looks terrible, this won’t be the only time you’ve let me down,” Azula said with the same weariness in her voice.

Ursa did not reply. She took one of Azula’s black locks between her fingers, which had apparently been chopped with a knife or a sword by an uncaring hand.

“…are you…?” she began, but Azula interrupted her with an irritated, “Just cut it!”

With a deep steadying breath, Ursa positioned the scissors and began.

The black tresses dropped to the ground in quick succession. She had no idea how to style hair this short so she went by her instincts and what she thought might look good once it dried. Of course, she was probably wrong, but—oh, well.

Azula looked different. Decidedly, noticeably different. The shape of her head and jawline was more pronounced, as was her long neck. The short hair dried very quickly in the sun, and Ursa brushed it experimentally until she was satisfied with the outcome.

“What do you think?” she asked, passing a small mirror to Azula.

Azula flinched at the sight of her own reflections. She took the mirror carefully, as if she was afraid it would explode in her hands. Then she turned her head this way and that, examining every angle.

“It’s terrible,” Azula said.

“I warned you,” Ursa said.

“I look like Zuko,” Azula frowned. “Wait, you weren’t there when he chopped off his topknot. It was hilariously bad.”

“You look nothing like Zuko,” Ursa said. “You also look nothing like me. Which, I assume, was partially the reason.”

“It was.”

Azula finished dressing in the light armour Ursa had brought. When she was done buckling the straps and adjusting her boots, she looked considerably more put together than Ursa had seen her since she her own return to the Capital. She had calmed down, too, once she examined herself in the small mirror.

“I brought food as well,” Ursa said.

“Let me guess,” Azula said. “And tea.”

“Yes, obviously. We are not barbarians.”

“Fine, whatever.”

The sun kept its inevitable descent across the sky. Ursa prepared such supper as she was able to, served on a flat rock and composed mostly of military rations. Azula’s ravenous hunger was kept in check by her considerable self-control. She ate as if they were dining at the Fire Lord’s table, and was chillingly polite throughout.

A few stars twinkled above the eastern horizon. Azula dabbed her mouth with a napkin and set it aside. She then sat still, staring blankly into space, while Ursa cleaned up.

“Is Mai and Ty Lee here?” Azula asked eventually.

“No. They weren’t around when we put together a search party,” Ursa said.

“Don’t lie to me,” Azula snapped.

Ursa sighed. “All right. I asked them. They did not want to come.”

Azula pressed her lips together.

“Fine. Am I to be arrested, then, or executed on the spot?”

Ursa opened her mouth, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to lie.

“It depends on whether or not you cooperate,” she said. “A number of people got hurt when you escaped. Zuko is… not pleased, shall we say.”

“Did any of them die?”

Ursa noted the flat tone, but also the tremor in Azula’s hands.

“No,” she said gently. “There were burns of varying degrees of severity.” Then she added, with a faint smile, “And, of course, your father’s ego.”

“Hmm.”

Silence hung between them, awkward, oppressive. They were running out of time.

“Why did you escape?” Ursa asked.

With a sudden, bitter laugh, Azula answered: “It’s really not that complicated. They imprisoned me, and I did not want to be imprisoned. You think I enjoyed it,” she snapped, “when they observed me day and night, took and compared notes, forced me to take medicine, forced me to eat when I wasn’t hungry—you don’t know what it’s _like_ —” she took a few deep breaths, visibly struggling to hold herself together. “I saw—things. And instead of taking them away, they only made it worse—”

After a pause, she continued, “It was so peaceful here when I arrived. And I could be alone, for the first time I could be alone – but the villagers alarmed the Forces, and—”

If there were tears in Azula’s eyes, Ursa resolved to pretend not to see them.

“I spent some time meditating,” Azula said in her normal voice. “And then you arrived.”

Ursa tried to force a smile onto her unwilling lips, but it wasn’t coming out right. So she steeled herself for what needed to be said.

“Azula – I can’t tell you how happy I am that you are okay. And the conditions you were kept it weren’t ideal, I agree. But people got hurt. Zuko had you imprisoned to prevent that from happening—”

“Don’t talk to me about Zuko,” Azula snarled. “Or his supposed benevolence.”

“What do you want to talk about, then?”

“I don’t know,” Azula said. “I don’t want to talk at all. It’s just—it didn’t used to be like this. I used to know what I want—or what Father wanted, anyway.” Her mouth twisted slightly, betraying youth and vulnerability that made Ursa’s heart ache. “He looks so pathetic now. I thought telling him that would make me feel better.”

Ozai sat alone in his cell, stripped of his grandeur, his titles, even his firebending. He had no power left over any of them – and yet. They kept coming back for a kernel of his approval, forgiving every unkind word because it only made the rare kind one that much sweeter. And Ursa failed to protect her children from that; and now it was too late.

“Do me a favour,” she said with a bitter half-smile. “Don’t ever love a man like that.”

“Oh, like you are that much better,” Azula said.

“I’m not,” Ursa said. “We have failed you, Ozai and I.”

Azula gave a humourless snort. “Is that the moment you start begging for my forgiveness, Mother? Because let me tell you, that was my favourite fantasy right after murdering you.”

_Mother_ , she had said. Ursa swallowed, her throat painfully tight.

“I don’t want your forgiveness,” she said.

Wide, golden eyes turned on her.

“Right, I forgot. You don’t care.”

There was a lot of forced nonchalance in the way she said it. Ursa smiled gently.

“More than anything, I want you to be safe and happy,” she said. “And I will do what I can to help you with that, if you want me to. But if you feel like you’d be better off far away from me and your father, then I’d rather you seek your peace elsewhere than waste your time trying to forgive us.”

Instead of answering, Azula turned her attention to the fleet circling the island. From their vantage point, if they climbed a rock, they could see a few of the boats with the tiny figures of the soldiers moving onboard. The sun’s golden disk had touched the horizon, and skiffs were being lowered onto the ocean waves. Their time was up.

“I will think about it,” Azula said.

“That’s all I ask of you,” Ursa replied quietly.

She did not know if her touch would be welcome but couldn’t help it. She reached out to brush Azula’s short hair, face that was so like her own, and the person that was anything but; and felt, perhaps for the first time, the fragile bond between them. When she embraced Azula, it was awkward and painful. Nevertheless, she was weak with gratitude when Azula hugged her back.

Perhaps she wasn’t wrong, then. Perhaps none of them were broken beyond repair.

They parted, Azula turning away from her, and walked side by side back to the beach.


End file.
